Ankit Nagori Does Equity Swap For Larger Ownership in Eat.Fit

Health and fitness brand Curefit’s founder Ankit Nagori has increased his ownership in CureFoods which runs its cloud kitchen Eat.Fit. While Nagori will continue to be a part of Curefit’s board, operationally he will be focussed on running Eat.Fit.

Nagori’s move comes in the backdrop of Curefit announcing that Eat.Fit will be an independent entity. The Bengaluru-based brand had said earlier that the move to spin off Eat.Fit was necessitated due to “rising consumer demands.”

“There has been an equity swap where Ankit Nagori has increased his ownership significantly in CureFoods. Curefit will continue to be a significant stakeholder in CureFoods. Eat.Fit will continue to sell on Curefit app and also will provide F&B services at Cult centres,” Cure.Fit said in a statement.

Prior to the equity swap, Nagori owned 7.6% stake in the company which is close to INR 420 Cr.

Quashing reports of Nagori planning to exit Cure.Fit, the company said, “He (Nagori) will continue to be on the board of Cure.Fit and will also have a stake in Cure.Fit and will work with Mukesh Bansal on strategic matters.” 

Nagori’s move to increase his ownership in CureFoods comes at a time when cloud kitchens have taken a hit due to the pandemic. In August, this year Cure.Fit had locked down kitchens in over a dozen cities to focus only on Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Coimbatore. In May and July this year the company had laid off, furloughed 1000 and 600 employees respectively. Eat.fit claims to have served over 1.5 Mn users to date.  

Founded in 2016 by Mukesh Bansal and Ankit Nagori, Curefit caters to living a healthy life through four critical dimensions — Eat.Fit, Mind.Fit, Cult.Fit and Care.Fit. While Cult.Fit focuses on physical strength and fitness, Eat.Fit focuses on healthy and nutritious food, Mind.Fit on mental wellbeing and care.fit on integrated medical and lifestyle care.

Earlier in March, Curefit had raised $110 Mn in a Series D2 funding round led by Singapore-based investment firm Temasek. Until last year, several media anticipated that Japanese conglomerate SoftBank would be investing somewhere between $200 Mn to $350 Mn in Curefit. However, the company never confirmed or denied the reports. Then in December, another report highlighted that Curefit was in talks with Temasek to raise $100 Mn at an $800 Mn valuation. Prior to this round, the company was valued at $575 Mn.

According to Inc42Plus estimates, the projected market size of cloud kitchens is expected to reach $1.05 Bn by 2023. The report ads that cloud kitchens are usually dependent on platforms such as Swiggy and Zomato for delivery, awareness, reach and customer experience. Therefore, the major operational costs such as marketing, discoverability and delivery are being borne by these food aggregators. Some of the prominent cloud kitchen networks in India are Hoi Foods, Rebel Foods, Box8 and more.